If the U.S. attorney doesn’t like what commenters say on your site, you may be served with a subpoena demanding their personal information.  Even if no crime has been indicated or committed in those comments.

So it is at the Las Vegas Review Journal, which has received a demand for all records related to recent commenter postings, including “full name, date of birth, physical address, gender, ZIP code, password prompts, security questions, telephone numbers and other identifiers … the Continue reading...]]> Newspapers with online versions and newsblogs everywhere take note:

If the U.S. attorney doesn’t like what commenters say on your site, you may be served with a subpoena demanding their personal information.  Even if no crime has been indicated or committed in those comments.

So it is at the Las Vegas Review Journal, which has received a demand for all records related to recent commenter postings, including “full name, date of birth, physical address, gender, ZIP code, password prompts, security questions, telephone numbers and other identifiers … the IP address”.

The comments were posted on this op-ed about an ongoing federal tax evasion trial. The defendant, Las Vegas resident Robert Kahre, is accused of tax fraud for paying people in U.S. minted gold and silver coins based on their precious metal value but using their face value for tax purposes (which is many times less).

As you will see if you scan them, the comments – about 100 of them - fall on various points on the Sane and Nutty graphs, per usual with these kinds of things.  Nothing terribly surprising or disturbing in any of them.

Here’s what Thomas Mitchell, editor at the LVRJ, is saying:

My first instinct is to fight the subpoena tooth and nail. After all, John Peter Zenger was just the printer who published anonymous essays critical of the colonial governor. His jury nullified the existing law and freed him.

On the other hand, if someone were to confess to a real and specific crime on our Web site, I’d give him up at the drop of a hat.

Bottom line: We could fight the federal subpoena, at considerable expense, and lose. Our attorneys are now trying to see if we can limit the scope of the information sought.

What the prosecutors don’t appear to understand is that we don’t have most of what they are seeking. We don’t require registration. A person could use a fictitious name and e-mail address, and most do. We have no addresses or phone numbers.

To add prior restraint to the chilling effect of the sweeping subpoena, we were warned: “You have no obligation of secrecy concerning this subpoena; however, any such disclosure could obstruct and impede an ongoing criminal investigation. …”

I wonder if Thomas Jefferson could have been subpoenaed when he wrote from Paris in 1787:  “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

The Sedition Act wasn’t passed until 12 years later. I thought it had since been repealed.

Heh!

Update: The LVRJ is fighting the subpoena.  And the ACLU has posted a message asking commenters if they would like free representation.  See here.  (Thanks to SinCityXtreme for sending the head’s up and link.)

Also, there are now 173 comments on the story.

Here’s Ryan’s sum up:

I think anyone saying that news organizations should charge for access is a complete moron. As Continue reading...]]> I’m nine days late to this post by Reno blogger Ryan Jerz – and the subsequent discussion in his Comments section - on whether internet access to news content is, or should be, a “right,” and whether or not it is moral to charge for it.  With U.S. print newspapers dying in droves and our own Las Vegas papers reportedly suffering, it’s a timely debate.

Here’s Ryan’s sum up:

I think anyone saying that news organizations should charge for access is a complete moron. As soon as there is yet another financial barrier to getting information that’s supposedly important to societies, you lose another group of people that (in the case of important information) should get access to it. If a well informed public is a more active and engaged public, who the hell in their right mind would advocate the taking of information away from that public? Besides politicians, of course.

Comments then ensue about how people have always paid for news via the print media but are accustomed to getting online info free, how news sources need to pay their news reporters but can’t if they aren’t being paid for content or generating enough ad dollars, how stupid it was for newspapers to start bundling their web ads with print ads (which de-valued web ads in the minds of ad buyers), and how to keep non-subsidized news sources independent. Among others.

I’m curious to see how things will work out for the print and online press in the next 5 to 10 years.  Whatever else, I predict that foundations and 501 organizations interested in achieving accountability-in-government though media and journalism will start offering grant money to start up and maintain independent online newspapers.  Newspapers may be dying, but those who love liberty cannot allow journalism to go with it.

If you have an interest and/or an opinon, read Ryan’s post and drop a Comment – or drop one here for me.

Here’s the opening:

I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush Continue reading...]]> An open letter to the newspapers of America by Orson Scott Card.  A little long but full of facts and well worth the read.

Here’s the opening:

I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn’t there a story here? Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefitting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

Read the rest when you have the time.

Hat Tip:  The Venerable Mr. Crum (thanks, honey!)